Ehime + Onomichi – Oct 2025_2

Imabari・今治

I don’t want to be awful but unless you love towels (and even then I’d hesitate to recommend it), I wouldn’t go to Imabari (sorry!). We went because, and I have no idea why I thought we would be able to do it, I decided it would be good to do the Shimanami Kaido. I booked us bikes and everything. We didn’t end up doing it, we got the bus instead.

Ikuchi Island・生口島

We stayed a night on this island. It was supposed to be a good midway point to stop and rest. Anyway, they have my favourite ice ...

Ehime + Onomichi – Oct 2025_1

Ozu・大洲

I lived in Ozu in Ehime Prefecture for two years as an ALT from 2012-2014. When I lived there, not much was going on. I used to be in bed at about 8:30pm most nights because there wasn’t really anything else to do. I cycled everywhere, did running as a hobby and had school lunch every day – I was very healthy! I was constantly on cockroach alert and I also had a very real fear of waking up with some kind of centipede walking on me. This happened to two people that I know, so it wasn’t an ...

日本語 notes・3月12日

  • I got asked the other day whether it was harder putting ひな人形 up or putting them away but the word the lady used for putting away was 直す which I hadn’t heard in that context before. I asked my teacher and she said it was dialect and asked where the lady was from. She was from Kumamoto but apparently Kansai and other areas use 直す for 片付ける.
  • 中国本土・ちゅうごくほんど = mainland China
  • 下処理・したしょり = 料理の下準備
  • お手上げだ = 全くどうしようもなくなり，途方にくれること・I don’t know what to do.

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09.03.26

Hair cut on Sunday, just how I usually have it done. At first Mum didn’t notice and then her response when I said was, I was just about to ask if you’d been to the hairdressers (no you weren’t). Then she said, it’s really nice and she kept saying that over and over until I told her to stop. And then she asked a bit later, are you happy with it? That just told me everything I needed to know about her opinion on it. Thanks Mum! ...

07.03.26

I think it’s going to be harder to get around China with no Chinese than C thinks. I’ve started trying to learn it on Duolingo but so far all I can say is ‘I am American’ which I’m not and ‘I speak English’, which I can just say in English. I’ve also got ‘I am a teacher’, ‘I am a lawyer’ and ‘I am a doctor’. I can’t even really say them that well, I can read them which I could do before Duolingo because they are really similar to Japanese. 我是美国人.我说英文.

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